1. MASTER HUMPHREY FROM HIS CLOCK SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY-CORNER
I WAS musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents
with which I had been so long engaged; wondering how I could ever
have looked forward with pleasure to the completion of my tale, and
reproaching myself for having done so, as if it were a kind of
cruelty to those companions of my solitude whom I had now
dismissed, and could never again recall; when my clock struck ten.
Punctual to the hour, my friends appeared.
On our last night of meeting, we had finished the story which the
reader has just concluded. Our conversation took the same current
as the meditations which the entrance of my friends had
interrupted, and The Old Curiosity Shop was the staple of our
discourse.
I may confide to the reader now, that in connection with this
little history I had something upon my mind; something to
communicate which I had all along with difficulty repressed;
something I had deemed it, during the progress of the story,
necessary to its interest to disguise, and which, now that it was
over, I wished, and was yet reluctant, to disclose.
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my
nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
This temper, and the consciousness of having done some violence to
it in
my narrative, laid me under a restraint which I should have
had great difficulty in overcoming, but for a timely remark from
Mr. Miles, who, as I hinted in a former paper, is a gentleman of
business habits, and of great exactness and propriety in all his
transactions.
“I could have wished,” my friend objected, “that we
had been made acquainted with the single gentleman's name. I don't like
his withholding his name. It made me look upon him at first with
suspicion, and caused me to doubt his moral character, I assure you. I
am fully satisfied by this time of his being a worthy creature; but in
this respect he certainly would not appear to have acted at all like a
man of business.”
“My friends,” said I, drawing to the table, at which they
were by this time seated in their usual chairs, “do you remember
that this story bore another title besides that one we have so often
heard of late?”
Mr. Miles had his pocket-book out in an instant, and referring to
an entry therein, rejoined, “Certainly. Personal Adventures of
Master Humphrey. Here it is. I made a note of it at the time.”
I was about to resume what I had to tell them, when the same Mr.
Miles again interrupted me, observing that the narrative originated
in a personal adventure of my own, and that was no doubt the reason
for its being thus designated.
This led me to the point at once.
“You will one and all forgive me,” I returned, “if
for the greater convenience of the story, and for its better
introduction, that adventure was fictitious. I had my share, indeed, —
no light or trivial one, — in the pages we have read, but it was not
the share I feigned to have at first. The younger brother, the single
gentleman, the nameless actor in this little drama, stands before you
now.”
It was easy to see they had not expected this disclosure.
“Yes,” I pursued. “I can look back upon my part in
it with a calm, half-smiling pity for myself as for some other man. But
I am he, indeed; and now the chief sorrows of my life are yours.”
I need not say what true gratification I derived from the sympathy
and kindness with which this acknowledgment was received; nor how
often it had risen to my lips before; nor how difficult I had found
it — how impossible, when I came to those passages which touched me
most, and most nearly concerned me — to sustain the character I had
assumed. It is enough to say that I replaced in the clock-case the
record of so many trials, — sorrowfully, it is true, but with a
softened sorrow which was almost pleasure; and felt that in living
through the past again, and communicating to others the lesson it
had helped to teach me, I had been a happier man.
We lingered so long over the leaves from which I had read, that as
I consigned them to their former resting-place, the hand of my
trusty clock pointed to twelve, and there came towards us upon the
wind the voice of the deep and distant bell of St. Paul's as it
struck the hour of midnight.
“This,” said I, returning with a manuscript I had taken
at the moment, from the same repository, “to be opened to such
music, should be a tale where London's face by night is darkly seen, and
where some deed of such a time as this is dimly shadowed out. Which of
us here has seen the working of that great machine whose voice has just
now ceased?”
Mr. Pickwick had, of course, and so had Mr. Miles. Jack and my
deaf friend were in the minority.
I had seen it but a few days before, and could not help telling
them of the fancy I had about it.
I paid my fee of twopence upon entering, to one of the money-changers who sit within the Temple; and falling, after a few turns
up and down, into the quiet train of thought which such a place
awakens, paced the echoing stones like some old monk whose present
world lay all within its walls. As I looked afar up into the lofty
dome, I could not help wondering what were his reflections whose
genius reared that mighty pile, when, the last small wedge of
timber fixed, the last nail driven into its home for many
centuries, the clang of hammers, and the hum of busy voices gone,
and the Great Silence whole years of noise had helped to make,
reigning undisturbed around, he mused, as I did now, upon his work,
and lost himself amid its vast extent. I could not quite determine
whether the contemplation of it would impress him with a sense of
greatness or of insignificance; but when I remembered how long a
time it had taken to erect, in how short a space it might be
traversed even to its remotest parts, for how brief a term he, or
any of those who cared to bear his name, would live to see it, or
know of its existence, I imagined him far more melancholy than
proud, and looking with regret upon his labour done. With these
thoughts in my mind, I began to ascend, almost unconsciously, the
flight of steps leading to the several wonders of the building, and
found myself before a barrier where another money-taker sat, who
demanded which among them I would choose to see. There were the
stone gallery, he
said, and the whispering gallery, the geometrical
staircase, the room of models, the clock — the clock being quite in
my way, I stopped him there, and chose that sight from all the
rest.
I groped my way into the Turret which it occupies, and saw before
me, in a kind of loft, what seemed to be a great, old oaken press
with folding doors. These being thrown back by the attendant (who
was sleeping when I came upon him, and looked a drowsy fellow, as
though his close companionship with Time had made him quite
indifferent to it), disclosed a complicated crowd of wheels and
chains in iron and brass, — great, sturdy, rattling engines, —
suggestive of breaking a finger put in here or there, and grinding
the bone to powder, — and these were the Clock! Its very pulse, if
I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the
flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it
would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but
measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to
crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to
clear a path before the Day of Judgment.
I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its regular and never-changing voice, that one deep constant note, uppermost amongst all
the noise and clatter in the streets below, — marking that, let
that tumult rise or fall, go on or stop, — let it be night or noon,
to-morrow or to-day, this year or next, — it still performed its
functions with the same dull constancy, and regulated the progress
of the life around, the fancy came upon me that this was London's
Heart, — and that when it should cease to beat, the City would be
no more.
It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness
favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast.
Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion
and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding
together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above
the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its space
everything, with its opposite extreme and contradiction, close
beside. Where yonder feeble light is shining, a man is but this
moment dead. The taper at a few yards' distance is seen by eyes
that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses
separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet
minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might
think would trouble the very air. In that close corner where the
roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their secrets
from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such
miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the
handsome street, there are folks asleep who have dwelt there all
their lives, and have no more knowledge of these things than if
they had never been, or were transacted at the remotest limits of
the world, — who, if they were hinted at, would shake their heads,
look wise, and frown, and say they were impossible, and out of
Nature, — as if all great towns were not. Does not this Heart of
London, that nothing moves, nor stops, nor quickens, — that goes on
the same let what will be done, does it not express the City's
character well?
The day begins to break, and soon there is the hum and noise of
life. Those who have spent the night on doorsteps and cold stones
crawl off to beg; they who have slept in beds come forth to their
occupation, too, and business is astir. The fog of sleep rolls
slowly off, and London shines awake. The streets are filled with
carriages and people gaily clad. The jails are full, too, to the
throat, nor have the workhouses or hospitals much room to spare.
The courts of law are crowded. Taverns have their regular
frequenters by this time, and every mart of traffic has its throng.
Each of these places is a world, and has its own inhabitants; each
is distinct from, and almost unconscious of the existence of any
other. There are some few people well to do, who remember to have
heard it said, that numbers of men and women — thousands, they
think it was — get up in London every day, unknowing where to lay
their heads at night; and that there are quarters of the town where
misery and famine always are. They don't believe it quite, — there
may be some truth in it, but it is exaggerated, of course. So,
each of these thousand worlds goes on, intent upon itself, until
night comes again, — first with its lights and pleasures, and its
cheerful streets; then with its guilt and darkness.
Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every stroke! as I look on
at thy indomitable working, which neither death, nor press of life,
nor grief, nor gladness out of doors will influence one jot, I seem
to hear a voice within thee which sinks into my heart, bidding me,
as I elbow my way among the crowd, have some thought for the
meanest wretch that passes, and, being a man, to turn away with
scorn and pride from none that bear the human shape.
I am by no means sure that I might not have been tempted to enlarge
upon the subject, had not the papers that lay before me on the
table been a silent reproach for even this digression. I took them
up again
when I had got thus far, and seriously prepared to read.
The handwriting was strange to me, for the manuscript had been
fairly copied. As it is against our rules, in such a case, to
inquire into the authorship until the reading is concluded, I could
only glance at the different faces round me, in search of some
expression which should betray the writer. Whoever he might be, he
was prepared for this, and gave no sign for my enlightenment.
I had the papers in my hand, when my deaf friend interposed with a
suggestion.
“It has occurred to me,” he said, “bearing in mind
your sequel to the tale we have finished, that if such of us as have
anything to relate of our own lives could interweave it with our
contribution to the Clock, it would be well to do so. This need be no
restraint upon us, either as to time, or place, or incident, since any
real passage of this kind may be surrounded by fictitious circumstances,
and represented by fictitious characters. What if we make this an
article of agreement among ourselves?”
The proposition was cordially received, but the difficulty appeared
to be that here was a long story written before we had thought of
it.
“Unless,” said I, “it should have happened that the
writer of this tale — which is not impossible, for men are apt to do so
when they write — has actually mingled with it something of his own
endurance and experience.”
Nobody spoke, but I thought I detected in one quarter that this was
really the case.
“If I have no assurance to the contrary,” I added,
therefore, “I shall take it for granted that he has done so, and
that even these papers come within our new agreement. Everybody being
mute, we hold that understanding if you please.”
And here I was about to begin again, when Jack informed us softly,
that during the progress of our last narrative, Mr. Weller's Watch
had adjourned its sittings from the kitchen, and regularly met
outside our door, where he had no doubt that august body would be
found at the present moment. As this was for the convenience of
listening to our stories, he submitted that they might be suffered
to come in, and hear them more pleasantly.
To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, and the party being
discovered, as Jack had supposed, and invited to walk in, entered
(though not without great confusion at having been detected), and
were accommodated with chairs at a little distance.
Then, the lamp being trimmed, the fire well stirred and burning
brightly, the hearth clean swept, the curtains closely drawn, the
clock wound up, we entered on our new story, BARNABY
RUDGE.
